Foreign Policy magazine has just released its 2009 list of failing states or those at risk of failure and South Asia makes for sobering reading.

All of India’s neighbours, except for tiny Bhutan, figure in the list of top 25 states that are faltering, although their rankings have improved marginally over the previous year.

So Afghanistan remains at number 7 in the table of failing states topped by Somalia. Pakistan is ranked 10th, just marginally better than its 9th position in last year’s table which perhaps reflects the belief that the state has begun to fight back the militants who threaten its existence.

(The higher you are on this list, based on 12 indicators measuring state cohesion and performance, the closer you are to failure)

You can see the full report of The Failed States Index 2009 here.

But just to distil it, here are the rankings for South Asian nations as they changed over the past year. Myanmar is ranked 13th which is what it was in 2008.

Bangladesh has moved down to 19th position from 12th the previous year, reflecting perhaps the return of an elected civilian government there.  But it remains at risk and as a Reuters analysis here points out there is a tendency to neglect the militant threat in Bangladesh, with all the attention focused on the violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sri Lanka takes the 22nd spot and Nepal 25rd, both slightly less at risk this year than in 2008 but still very much in the world’s top 25 states.

And India? Foreign Policy puts it at 87th position, a healthy score for a country that some thought wouldn’t survive especially during the Sikh revolt of the 1980s, and other insurgencies in that period.

Giant neighbour China, according to the editors of the magazine, is more at risk with a score of 57.

[Photo of a U.S. Marine in southern Afghanistan]

During two decades of anti-India revolt, Kashmir has lost tens of thousands of people, property worth billions of dollars and much more.

But the disputed Himalayan Valley has also lost over 1,500 working days (more than four years) to separatists’ shutdown calls in the past 20 years, dealing a crippling blow to its ailing economy.

The tourism industry of the scenic Valley, ringed by Himalayan peaks and dotted with mirror-calm lakes, shimmering streams and dense pine and conifer forests, is frequently disrupted by strikes and violent protests over the separatist cause.

But do war-weary Kashmiris have other means to raise their voice against human rights violations and resist New Delhi’s rule?

According to the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the region loses 100 million rupees for every day of shutdown.

Shutdowns have been a general expression of anti-India protests by separatists and militants since simmering discontent against Indian rule turned into a full-blown rebellion in 1989.

But many people now question the rationale behind endless strikes.

Local newspapers quoting residents of Kashmir say separatists are setting the wrong precedent by enforcing strikes after every “unfortunate incident”.

“It appears the separatists are extracting revenge from innocent ordinary people rather than taking revenge from the perpetrators of these crimes,” Mohammad Ramzan, a shopkeeper was quoted as saying by The Himalayan Mail.

But hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani says strikes are the only means to raise a voice against the unprecedented “Indian oppression on people of Kashmir” for the last 62 years.

Protests in Kashmir have intensified since bodies of two women, aged 17 and 22, who locals say were abducted, raped and killed by security forces, were found on May 29.

Shopian town in south Kashmir, where the bodies were found, has remained shut for a month.

Kashmiri columnists say despite a sustained campaign against strikes, little has changed and people continue to follow the protest calls.

“It is because hartals (shutdowns) are an unavoidable tool of resistance,” Javaid Malik wrote.

The strife-torn region has suffered a lot due to frequent shutdowns that have severely dented Kashmir’s tourism industry and education.

Do separatist leaders need to rethink this issue?

A new reality show in which a bunch of suitable men vie for the hand of Bollywood starlet Rakhi Sawant is an interesting twist on the prevailing custom of Indian men choosing their brides.

“Rakhi Sawant ka Swayamvar“, which harks back to the ancient tradition of princesses choosing a groom from a line-up, began airing on Monday night, pitting more than a dozen men from varied backgrounds — and with varying singing and dancing abilities — wooing Sawant, a colourful personality known more for her antics off camera.

It may be yet another publicity stunt for Sawant, who claims she will marry one of the men at the end of the series in a traditional wedding ceremony.

It may be yet another move by the channel, fighting for eyeballs and advertisers, to score high TRPs - or Television Rating Points that show how popular a programme is.

Still, it offers some respite from the female stereotyping on the Indian airwaves: from ads that show women as being incapable of any decision save the right cooking oil for the family, to shows that glorify child marriage and female foeticide under the guise of ushering in social change.

A soap featuring a child bride married at the age of eight claims it “very sensitively portrays the plight of children who are unwittingly forced into marriage, in the name of tradition”.

A brief blink-and-you-miss-it disclaimer at the end of the show says child marriage is illegal.

Competing for shock and awe value on the same channel is another soap that features a village where newborn baby girls are drowned in a pool of milk.

Not recommended viewing in a country where the gender ratio is so skewed in some states that it has set alarm bells ringing. The networks claim they are raising awareness of these “social evils”.

But that is not a primary concern; they have TRPs to deliver, viewers to satisfy and advertisers to please.

Sure, TV is capable of sparking debate and bringing about change, but for a casual viewer seeking an insight into how India treats its women, what’s on primetime telly is scarcely redeeming, is it?

He’s been called the “Quiet Revolutionary“. And India’s prime minister-in-waiting. But does Rahul Gandhi, a virtual novice in the rough and tumble of Indian politics, have what it takes for the country’s top job?

He didn’t exactly set the house on fire during his first five years in parliament. And until this election, Rahul’s only USP was that he belonged to India’s first family, the Nehru-Gandhi family which has given the country three prime ministers.

He’s only 39, and has no experience with complex subjects such as Pakistan or the economy.

But after the recent election, Rahul has emerged as a savvy politician, a grassroots activist with a finger on the pulse of the real India.

His strategy of not allying with any of the regional parties in northern India despite pressure from party officials paid off big time.

The Congress party’s decision to go it alone in northern India helped it more than double its seats in Uttar Pradesh.

Initially, based just on his political strategy for this election, there was much speculation over whether he would join the cabinet, and if he did what portfolio he’d get.

Eventually, Rahul wasn’t a part of the cabinet, but he’s still seen as the face of the Congress party from now on — and perhaps prime minister at some point in the future.

But isn’t there a danger he could be sidelined if he isn’t part of the federal cabinet?

Sure, he has age on his side and he can learn over the next five years. Besides, like his father, Rajiv, he appeals to millions of young voters in India.

But he’s not alone in that sense. He is part of a new generation of young parliamentarians like Sachin Pilot and Jyotiraditya Scindia who have a completely new perspective on politics.

So the question many in India are asking is: could Rahul Gandhi be overshadowed by other younger politicians who are in the cabinet?

A suicide bomber has struck in Pakistani Kashmir killing two soldiers in what is said to be the first such attack in the Himalayan region. The attacker targeted military barracks, which raises the question whether Pakistan’s Islamist militants are opening a new front just as they come under pressure in the northwest.

A suicide attack in Muzaffarabad, eerily identical to the scores that have taken place on the Indian side of the scenic region in the past, will trigger interest in New Delhi for likely clues to which way the war in Pakistan is headed.

Nobody yet has claimed responsibility, but if it is the Pakistan Taliban what signal is it sending? Is it going to fight the Pakistani army everywhere including Kashmir, which really has been at the core of Pakistan’s policy towards India.

Or is it the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has long operated on the Indian side of Kashmir as also other parts of India ? Are they sending a warning against any crackdown on the group, which New Delhi has been demanding even more stridently since the Mumbai attacks.

For the Lashkar, seen to have long-running ties to Pakistan’s security establishment, to be turning against its benefactors in such manner and such an emotive location would indeed be a watershed.

Or is this intended to raise tensions between India and Pakistan in Kashmir again? India holds Pakistan-based groups responsible for the rebellion in Kashmir. Are the Pakistanis going to point the finger at India, now that violence has reached their part of Himalayan region?

No coincidence, but the attack comes just as India’s defence minister said infiltration by guerrillas from Pakistan into Indian Kashmir was down this summer.

[Photo: Bridge connecting the two parts of Kashmir]

A mob vandalized a police station in west Delhi this week after a woman accused five policemen of raping her in a police station.

This is not the first time enforcers of the law have been accused of rape.

In 2005, a 16-year-old girl was raped by a drunk constable in south Mumbai in the infamous Marine Drive rape case.

A year later, another police constable was accused of raping a slum dweller in Karnal.

Data from the National Crimes Record Bureau shows courts tried 132 policemen for custodial rape in 2002 but only four were convicted.

Does this mean women who seek the help of the law are better off not reporting crimes committed against them?

Some amendments were made to the Code of Criminal Procedure Act in 2005 to prevent incidents of custodial rape.

For example, the Act prohibits the arrest of women after sunset and before sunrise except in exceptional circumstances.

But how many women know about their rights? And are steps like this enough?

ALSO READ: Surviving as a woman in urban India

I have been noticing a debate in newspapers and television channels about the need to call in the army to tackle the Maoists and wonder whether it is indeed time to turn towards them before the movement spirals out of control.

Last week, hundreds of Maoists, who are expanding their influence in India, chased away police from a tribal area based around the town of Lalgarh about 170 km (100 miles) from Kolkata, capital of West Bengal state.

By attacking Lalgarh and then keeping the police at bay for four days, the Maoists demonstrated their growing influence over poor villagers and their capability to strike close to a big city like Kolkata.

(For Analysis on how Maoist insurgency can hurt industry in India, click here )

Thousands of villagers caught in the crossfire have left their homes in panic and have been put up in makeshift government camps. They are clearly shaken by the siege and the subsequent police campaign to sanitise Lalgarh.

Indian states have time and again asked the central government that it might need the army to fight the Maoist movement, which is rapidly spreading in the country.

But for the moment, India is banking on the police to tackle the Maoists and equipping its forces with modern weapons and training to fight the Maoists in their own den.

Experts say it is clear that the strategy of the rebels with their 22,000 plus combatants is to encircle bigger towns and cities and could hit industry.

Maybe Indian authorities should also rework their strategy as the police with their limited prowess have always been soft targets in rural areas and have failed to gain confidence of poor villagers.

Will India look to deploy the army at some stage?

(Reuters photo of a paramilitary soldier keeping watch from a tree in Jhitka near Lalgarh June 21, 2009)

Pakistan’s success in the Twenty20 cricket World Cup must rank as one of sports’ more timely victories. For a state that is supposed to be at war with itself, failing and in danger of fragmentation there cannot be a sweeter way to hit back.

Younus Khan who led his unfancied team comes from the North West Frontier Province, as does Shahid Afridi whose explosive batting took Pakistan to an eight-wicket win over Sri Lanka, another nation wracked by decades of civil war, but coming out of it.

The NWFP is the frontline of the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda that has so blighted the nation, left it divided, bleeding and saddled with a huge refugee problem. Indeed Khan said the World Cup was a gift to the people of Pakistan.

Cricinfo compared Pakistan’s success to a newly-reunified South Africa’s victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup, saying there had not been a more timely win since then.

Younus also said  cricketing nations must resume playing in his troubled, but cricket-mad nation.

“Everybody must come to Pakistan. We need a home test series. How can we attract the youngsters? Players muct come to Pakistan.”

Is the world ready to reconsider? Will India, no stranger to militancy itself, soften up? The 50-over World Cup scheduled for 2011 has been taken away from Pakistan, and is to be played now in only India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The ICC Champions Trophy that it was scheduled to host last year was shifted out, and Australia, New Zealand and England have refused to play there.

Indeed Pakistan’s cricket authorities have challenged the decision to drop them from the host nations of the 2011 World Cup and  it has renewed a call to its co-Asian hosts to support its bid to hold the tournament.

Standing up for cricket in Pakistan may also be  a way to challenge the forces of darkness that is the Taliban, argues Tunku Varadarajan in a piece for Forbes. The victory was a monumental boost to a nation drained of all morale.

And cricket, he says “offers an alternative vision of civilization with which Pakistanis can contrast the viciously bleak program of the Taliban.”

A spate of attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney has seen the Indian media accuse Australia of being a racist nation.

Newspaper articles warning of a culture of “curry bashings” in Australia have sparked off debate and people around the world have spoken out against the attacks in online forums.

Some insist the majority of attacks may have been purely criminal.

As an Indian studying in the U.S. for the past three years, I am yet to come across any instance of Indians being targeted on the basis of their race.

I have never heard my American friends say anything against Indians or students of any other nationality.

Does that mean Indians are safer in New York than in Melbourne?

The attacks on Indians did take place in Australia, but then they could have happened anywhere.

Even in India, there are cases of what some may call racial bias. In fact, there is a debate on whether discrimination on the basis of caste is the same as racial discrimination.

While the attacks in Australia are wrong, unjust and unfair — some say it’s difficult to classify them as racist, others feel the numbers are too high for them to be random acts of violence.

Even those who think the attacks were race-based blame the global economic slowdown.

“Racist outrages are an expression of a deeper malaise,” Sitaram Yechury, a communist party leader, wrote in his party organ — “People’s Democracy” — this month.

“The Australian Prime Minister has declared, for the first time, that the economy has moved into a state of recession,” Yechury said.

In his Business Week blog, Mehul Srivastava agrees that not all of it is “simple racism”.

“It’s anger and resentment tinged by economic envy and by anxiety over their own financial conditions.”

Some 93,000 Indian students study in Australia. Last week, hundreds of them marched through Sydney calling for more action by authorities to protect their rights.

On Wednesday, a public interest petition was filed in the Supreme Court urging the Indian government to engage in pro-active diplomacy to prevent similar incidents.

Now it looks like even Bollywood is taking up cudgels on the students’ behalf. Filmmaker Mohit Suri has announced he’s scripting a movie based on the attacks in Australia.

What do you think? Are Indians in Australia being preyed on by petty criminals? Or are these racist attacks?.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has dropped a plan to travel to Egypt next month where he was expected to hold further talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh following their meeting in Russia this week.

Pakistan’s foreign office has said Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani will attend the summit of Non-Aligned Nations in the Egyptian city of Sharm El Sheikh although soon after the Singh-Zardari meeting in Yekaterinburg the two sides announced plans for a second meeting in July.

Has something gone wrong?

Newspapers on both sides of the border read more into the change of plans than just a normal swap of duties between the prime minister and the president.

The Dawn linked the cancellation to displeasure over Singh telling Zardari in the full glare of the world’s media that Pakistan should not allow its soil to be used for militant attacks on India.

The soft-spoken Singh’s rather unexpected remark right at the beginning of the first-to-face encounter with Pakistan’s leaders since the Mumbai attacks in November ensured that the meeting was unpleasant from the outset, it said.

Pakistan’s The News said New Delhi had handed Zardari a “well staged slight” but Islamabad was setting it aside because at the end of the day the two sides were talking again.

Indian newspapers were less restrained, saying Zardari dropped out of the next meeting after Singh’s blunt talk and that Islamabad wanted to send the message that his rather public reprimand had not gone down well with Pakistan.

Did India over-reach then? Perhaps too much shouldn’t be read into all this. The Hindu points out that this may not yet be the last word, as Zardari has changed travel plans at the last minute several times.

At home though, they are applauding Singh both for his tough talk and the realisation that you have to engage the “imploding neighbour” because that is the neighbourhood it lives in.

Singh had served notice that India and indeed its neighbours were going to see a more determined prime minister in the months ahead, “a far cry from the man who was seemingly too timid to take on his tormentors during the previous five years,” as New Delhi’s Mint wrote.

And columnist and former ambassador Kuldip Nayar said the meeting hadn’t come a day too soon.

“Too much time and too much money have been wasted in talking against each other instead of talking to each other. The two countries have not experienced peace since independence; 62 years is a long period for the people to suffer estrangement and live in fear of war all the time,” he wrote.

Are they slipping back into talking at each other?